Petition the Punxsutawney Phils

In today’s Inquirer, Phil Sheridan wrote a nice piece on the current state of the Phillies in the context of how they are perceived by the fans. He referred to the club as the Punxsutawney Phils – which is a pretty apt description because year after year, without fail, we all buy our tickets for the Phillies rollercoaster but ultimately end up disappointed. It reminds me of the Nick Hornsby quote I referred to last year, “Never be bad enough to go down, but never good enough to win anything, and the stasis made you want to scream with frustration.” Yes, our beloved club makes us scream with frustration more often than not. Sheridan believes players will feel that fan frustration upon returning from their tumultuous road trip tonight. “But if the Phillies felt pressure before, there’s a chance some of their heads will actually explode when they face the fans this week. The mood here is a lot angrier and uglier than it was before Brett Myers’ arrest for alleged domestic assault and the team’s clumsy response to it. “

We sure are angry, just check out the new Sell the Phils site. But to help fans further cope with the depression, Phillies Nation is starting a bit of a write-in campaign. We would like you, the fans, to write us with a short story about how you became fans of baseball, the team and why it’s so frustrating that the ownership can’t match the intensity of the fan base. We’ve seen in Ed Wade’s last days that a grassroots effort to petition the organization and the threat of reduced ticket sales can actually have an effect. The national media has been ripping the club, and have correctly recognized, “Philadelphia fans are famous for their passion and can’t easily stomach ownership pulling an Emperor Nero and fiddling while Rome burns.”

This is why we need to let the ownership know how we feel. We’ve already collect a dozen or so letters on through our myspace site before officially launching this campaign, so pop over to the Contact Us form and join the swell. After all, today is July 4th, you should seize the opportunity to make our founding fathers proud. All the letters will be collected and personally delivered to King George, oops, I mean David Montgomery. Hopefully then, the Phillies executives will stop taking the fans for granted and start to behave like a responsible club both in terms of player personnel and public relations. To end, I’ll let Phil Sheridan take us home: The right baseball decision is also the right public-relations decision. Give this city a baseball team worth loving, and the ballpark will no longer be a place to dread.